The Stream, April 26: The Water-Energy-Food Nexus

Food has quickly become the hidden driver of world politics, Foreign Policy writes, and the world is losing its ability to soften the effect of its resource shortages. How do food, energy, population and water policies fit the big puzzle?

Saudi Arabia, one of the countries most at risk of water and grain shortages, has just awarded contracts worth $43 million to develop water projects, such as digging wells, water pipelines and new sanitation systems, Bloomberg reports.

Climate change and growing demand are threatening China’s water supply, the country’s Minister of Water Resources said. Read about China’s water-energy collision on Circle of Blue.

One of the regions that is confronting the energy-water choke point most dramatically is China’s Southwest, where plans to build dams and re-route rivers are triggering tensions downstream as far as India, Associated Press reports.

This Forbes blog post puts in question Areva SA’s proposed method of treating the radioactive water at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

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